What will come first? USB-C iPhone or no-port iPhone? Either way, Lightning seems here to stay

[…] the nerd world may clamor for one universal connector that charges everything from iPhones to iPads to MacBooks, but the normal world just wants their existing cables to keep working when they buy a new iPhone. Lightning is obviously better than the old 30-pin adapter — the old 30-pin connectors look ridiculous in hindsight. But people upgrading from older iPhones were outraged when Apple introduced Lightning with the iPhone 5 in 2012. They saw it as a money grab — a new port introduced so everyone would have to buy new cables. The fact that you wouldn’t have to buy USB-C cables from Apple wouldn’t change that perception if future iPhones switch to USB-C — nerds might rejoice but regular folks will object.

It is a very cable/connectors nerdy article[^ 1], but it actually says a lot about Apple and their need of control. I wish Apple would just switch everything to USB-C, but Gruber’s reasons for why they are keeping the Lightning port are very compelling. One of them being that there are way more people in the world owning just an iPhone than people owning an iPhone and USB-C devices.

Besides, if you really want to go all USB-C with an iPhone, you can just buy a USB-C Qi wireless charger and work your way around Lightning. It obviously gets trickier when you add AirPods, an Apple trackpad, or even an Apple Watch to picture.1

What I think Apple should do though: introduce a new cable design. The old shitty white-turns-grey-turns-crap cables look and feel great out of the box, but they wear off too fast and too easily, and they are not really practical or efficient when it comes to putting in a bag or in a pocket. Apple is very proud of its achievements in environmental policies: I am pretty sure those cables can be improved. They may be too busy on AirPower though.

If you are in that situation, I am pretty sure you don’t really care about ports anymore, and you just carry a bunch of cables everywhere you go anyway.↩